Japan was tributary of the US oil as 80% of the oil imported by Japan comes from the US. There were a succession of incident (such as the Panay incident, named after an American gunboat sunk by the Japanese and more generally the brutality of Japan during the war against China); and aggressive territorial expansions threatening the security of the US Philippines (the occupation of the island Hainan and occupation of bases in Indochina after the fall of France against Germany).

As a result the Roosevelt administration imposed a series of sanctions: an embargo on metal scrap, a froze the Japanese assets and finally an oil embargo on Japan on August 41 which the Dutch and British agreed to follow. In 1941, Japan estimated its need of oil at 35.9 millions of barrel per year (5.7 for the army, 12.6 for the industry and 17.6 for the Navy) but only had managed to stockpile 42.7 million barrels of oil (figure of March 1941). Those sanctions were put in order to negotiate a Japan withdrawal from China and Indochina but the Japanese militarist Tojo administration couldn't agree to those conditions. Consequently, the Japanese believed that in order not to make their economy collapse and their army/navy paralysed they had little choice but to secure a source of oil by force, and that would be the Dutch Netherlands. They also believed that any aggression in this area would trigger war with the US, hence they decided to attack Pearl Harbor.

Now you may ask why did Japan didn't attack the USSR instead to secure oil. The answer is that there weren't any oil exploration in the east of the USSR, they would have to go until West Siberia or the Caucasus for this which would far exceed the Japanese limited logistic especially for a continental war and since it was already engaged in a war against China. Additionally, there wouldn't be the facilities to import the oil from there.

There are a bunch of other reasons that would deter a Japanese attack on the USSR even more. In 1936, the most virulent anti-soviet faction of Japan, named the Imperial Way faction, attempted a coup but failed and as a result was marginalized. The incoherent stance of Germany should also be taken in account: the anti Comintern pact was signed in 1936 between Germany and Japan but Germany would latter sign a treaty of non aggression with the USSR in 1939. Japan also briefly fought and lost against the USSR in a series of skirmish which peaked with battle at Khalkhin Gol (also called Nomonhan Incident) in 1939 which made Japan doubt a victory against USSR would be easy. All those events lead Japan to negotiate a pact of non aggression with the USSR in April 1941, before operation Barbarossa.

Finally despite this, Stalin in his paranoia would still leave considerable force in the east of USSR. On June 1941, the Soviet had ~700.000 soldiers( 17 infantry divisions, 1 cavalry division, 3 armoured and 2 mechanized divisions) on their eastern front against Japan. After Stalin got the confirmation that Japan would indeed strike the US and Pearl Harbor, he transferred 11 of this divisions to the west where they famously fought during the battle of Moscow. However in the meantime, the front got completed by soldier from the general mobilizations, as a result in January 1942, there were 1.3 million men in Siberia !